Background:

I have a strong quantitative background because of my education and hence spent most of my time preparing for the Verbal Section. I started studying for the GRE all the way back in June, took it on November 5th, and received my official score on 14th November. I quickly realized that having a strong vocab is necessary for scoring well on the Verbal Section and spent most of my time there and practicing Reading Comprehension.

Preparation:

I didn’t want to spend any more money on ETS and GRE, so restricted myself to the free resources available. I started my prep with the ETS PowerPrep 1 in June and scored 169Q/156V. Most of the questions I got wrong were either due to vocabulary or reading comprehension.

Verbal Prep: I didn’t really touch any books for verbal prep. I solved all ETS official questions available on greprepclub and interacted with people there to understand tricks and tips. Greprepclub also allowed me to time myself pretty easily (they have a timer embedded into each question) which obviously helps a lot. For expanding vocab, I first spent a few days building some basic words and then just focused on words as they appeared in questions. For each new word encountered while practicing, I entered its meaning, link to the question with that word, and a youtube video explaining it into a spreadsheet. I went over the spreadsheet every other day and by the test day I made sure I knew all the vocab words appearing in the ETS official books at the very least. In September, this idea of maintaining a spreadsheet with words led to another mini project of analyzing which words are the most important on the GRE and articulating a resource which speeds up learning. Results from that project can be found here: greprepclub . com /forum/gre-prep-club-official-vocabulary-lists-for-the-gre-20373.html. This analysis is particularly helpful if you are short on time since it tells you the order in which you should go about learning the words. It is also helpful if you are trying to find a good way to learn these vocab words. Here are some other free resources I used to study for the verbal section: greprepclub . com/forum/free-gre-materials-where-to-get-it-18796.html

Quant Prep: I didn’t spend much time on this section since the questions I was getting wrong were mostly silly mistakes. I practiced some questions from the ETS official books but largely limited this to practice tests. The only advice I have here is: think twice about each question and remember that ETS is trying to trick you. If this is something you are trying to improve, I think the Manhattan Prep 5lb book is a pretty comprehensive resource.

AWA Prep: Gregmat saved me here! I watched his two videos on the AWA the day before, wrote two timed practice essays, and went into the test. If there is one thing I regret from my GRE prep, it is not spending enough time on the AWA.

Practice Tests:

I took 4 practice tests in total. Here is a good list of practice tests available - crunchprep . com/gre/free-gre-practice-tests:

ETS PowerPrep 1 (June): 169Q/156V. I felt both the verbal and the quant sections were easier than the questions on the actual test

CrunchPrep (4 days before the exam): 170Q/156V: I didn’t like this test at all to be honest. The vocab was pretty obscure and some questions didn’t make sense. I recommend not wasting time on this. I think I should have taken the ManhattanPrep test instead of this.

Princeton Review (3 days before the exam): 168Q/160V: This test was a lot more realistic. Highly recommend taking it! I was a little sad about my Quant score (I was aiming for a perfect score), but most of my mistakes were again silly, so I didn’t think too much about it.

ETS PowerPrep 2 (2 days before the exam): 170Q/160V: Definitely boosted my confidence a little bit. The question difficulty was on point (for both sections).

I spent the last day revising vocab and expanding it to a few more words.

Test Day:

I took the test at home. The test order was VQVQV which I thought was nice since I really wanted a perfect score on Quant. I think the first Verbal was the experimental since the second one was really easy and the third one was moderate. I had a pretty decent experience besides 2 interruptions. My proctor called in on time and was quick to set my test up. The proctor interrupted in the first verbal section, saying that my camera was frozen. He fixed it in under a minute but didn’t give me any time back. I was pretty close to done so I don’t think it mattered much anyway. My second interruption happened after the test ended (while entering colleges for reporting). I asked my proctor if I could google up whether the programs I am applying to require reporting a department code, and they said I could. While googling this up, ProctorU kept getting disconnected. We resolved this by using a front camera application instead and ended the test promptly.

Official Score: 170Q/161V 4.5AWA. A slightly higher verbal (even 1-2 points) would have been better, but I think it's fine since the programs I am applying to look at quant more than verbal.

Conclusion: I am pretty happy with my score and don’t think I could have done it without greprepclub. Thank you so much Carcass!

Thanks for reading my post! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below Would be more than happy to answer.

Small note: all the urls above have spaces between dot and com because greprepclub wouldn't let me post URLs haha. I hope thats okay!